Shalom

Whether you are a member or a friend, you are welcome at CRC. Please join us at our upcoming services, programs or events.

Sacred Conversations on Race

Saturday, March 7 and Saturday, March 14 at 12:30 pm at CRC

​CRC is a member of Metropolitan Congregations United, a multi-faith and multi-racial alliance of congregations who work together on issues of social justice. All of the congregations have been very involved with post-Ferguson organizing. As part of this effort, MCU is sending facilitators to member congregations, including CRC, to talk openly and productively about racial issues. These are meant to be consecutive conversations; if you come on the 7th, it would be helpful if you could come back on the 14th, and it would be best not to attend on the 14th if you have to miss the 7th. Later in March, members and clergy from the congregations will come together to collectively process the conversations and plan next steps. This will take the place of this month’s Basic Judaism. For more information, please contact Jennifer Bernstein at (314) 361-1564, ext. 117 or jenniferb@centralreform.org.

*** Anne & Emmett at CRC has been rescheduled to Monday, April 13!***

The Joint Venture Presents a Special Performance of The Black Rep's Anne &Emmett at CRC

Monday, April 13, 7:00 pm

This is not to be missed! Anne & Emmett is an imaginary conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till, both victims of racial intolerance and hatred. Frank is the 13-year-old Jewish girl whose diary provided a gripping perspective of the Holocaust. Till is the 14-year old African-American boy whose brutal murder in Mississippi sparked the American Civil Rights Movement.

The one-act play opens with the two teenagers meeting in Memory, a place that isolates them from the cruelty they experienced during their lifetime.
The beyond-the-grave encounter draws the startling similarities between the two youths’ harrowing experiences and the atrocities against them. Seating is limited, so please arrive early. The play is free of charge, but donations are appreciated. For more information, please contact Jennifer Bernstein at jenniferb@centralreform.org.

Hien-haw Liow's D'var Torah

The weekend of January 9th was a very special one for both our friend Hien-haw Liow and CRC. Hien is a Washington University graduate student from China who has been studying Judaism for the past few years. If you are a regular Shabbat service attendee, you have no doubt seen his smiling face and held a wonderful conversation with him. He made his conversion to Judaism official on January 9th, and on January 10th, he was called to the Torah for his Bar Mitzvah (where he chanted Torah in both Ashenazi and Sephardic Hebrew)! For those of you who could not be there, we wanted to make his beautiful D'var Torah available to read (click here). His mother was able to stream the service all the way from China. Click here to read her blessing for Hien. Mazel tov, Hien, and welcome to the tribe!

CRC MLK Celebration

The Joint Venture celebration was an extremely moving and important gathering. The sanctuary was filled to the brim with members of both CRC and Christ the King. Our rabbis and Reverend Blackmon spoke beautifully and the dialogues among participants will play a role in helping our city heal. Please enjoy the pictures below, courtesy of Lisa Mandel. Click here to view more pictures.

Weatherization Project a Huge Success!

As one of Central Reform Congregation’s longest community partnerships, we have been helping weatherize in the Grace Hill neighborhood since 1990. We worked with a team of other community volunteers to place plastic on interior windows of select area resident homes to keep our neighbors warm this winter. This year we focused on elderly residents within the Grace Hill service area. A huge thank you goes out to Marcy Brodsky, who worked extremely hard to make these two days happen.

Suspicion Nation Event

Rabbi Susan recently served as an honorary co-chair of a recent panel discussion on St. Louis race relations in the aftermath of Ferguson. Presented by Meet Me St. Louis, the event was hosted by the Missouri History Museum and cosponsored by 30 community organizations. NBC News Legal Analyst Lisa Bloom led the discussion.

Rabbi Susan is Back From Israel

PrideFest 2014 a Huge Success!

The Jewish Communities contingent once again made a big splash at PrideFest this year. Our booth was swamped with people looking for the hot ticket items - our rainbow Star of David temporary tattoos and our "I Love Nice Jewish Boys/Girls/Queers" stickers. The parade was a blast and our Tree of Life flash mob was a hit! CRC was well represented (as always!). We hope to see you again at PrideFest 2015!

Rabbi Susan Helps Make History

At St. Louis City Hall on the evening of June 25, Rabbi Susan officiated at the wedding of CRC members Terry Garrett and Bruce Yampolsky. They were married alongside three other LGBT couples in Mayor Slay's office. The marriage licenses issued were the first of their kind in the state of Missouri. This is a clear, direct challenge to Missouri's unconstitutional ban on marriage equality.

Bruce and Terry celebrated their 30 years of love and commitment. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, all couples will be allowed to marry in Missouri. Mazel Tov to Terry and Bruce!

Help Support CRC when you shop on Amazon

When you shop on Amazon Smile, Amazon will make a donation to Central Reform Congregation. It is a quick and easy way to help raise money for CRC!

Rabbi Susan Named One
of America's Most Inspiring Rabbis by The Jewish Daily
FORWARD!

Live-Streaming Kabbalat Shabbat Services

We are now live-streaming our Friday night services. Click the "U" button (USTREAM) on the bottom of the left panel. In the search window (top, center), enter central reform congregation Shabbat, and click on LIVE. We will archive the services and these will be available for later viewing on the site.

In the same panel, you can connect to our Facebook page, our Twitter page, and directly e-mail CRC.

Connecting at CRC...

As the kickoff event of our 30th Anniversary Celebration, our Open House and Opportunities Fair brought out a huge number of CRC members and potential members who explored how they could become involved in the life and work of CRC. Didn't make it or are curious?Click here to read the details of our opportunities. Click hereto let us know your interests.

Your Library: Our Sifriat Shalom

Looks like every other link? Yes, but this one is the key to our on-line catalog of books. You can check by author, title or subject matter to see what books we own and which of them are available for check-out, i.e. “IN.” The option to reserve items on-line is not yet available. Try it. See what we have and visit the library when you are here.

March University Series - The Magic of Jewish Rituals
Tuesdays in March, 7:00 pm

Every day, almost every person performs a ritual of some sort. Whether it’s how you put the toothpaste on your toothbrush or making sure to touch your mezuzah on the way out of the house, rituals impact our lives in profound ways. Rituals shape our very lives; they are the foundation stones upon which we build our experiences and our identities. Indeed, ritual is one of the cornerstones of Judaism, becoming the way in which we mark significant, transitional moments in our lives. From baby namings to b’nai mitzvah, to weddings and shiva, the meaningful moments in our lives are often remembered in conjunction with the rituals that mark them.

Join Rabbi Deana in an exploration of Jewish rituals: Where do they come from? How have they evolved? What makes a ritual successful? And most importantly, how can we re-imagine and reinvent rituals to become meaningful markers in our lives?

March Social Responsibility Shabbat - Friday, March 27, 7:30 pm

Fourteen members of CRC’s 9th grade class traveled to Washington, DC last month, accompanied by Rabbi Deana, Jen Bernstein, and three chaperones – Jared Berezin, Julie Cohen and Marty Maier. The students spent the school year studying social justice issues and preparing to lobby on Capitol Hill. There were several highlights of the trip: They met with Mother Jones journalist and F.O.G. (that’s “Friend of Gabe (Fleisher)” to you and me) David Corn, as well as representatives from JStreet and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, toured the Supreme Court, the Newseum, the United States Holocaust Museum, the Smithsonian, and the monuments, met with a group of representatives from the National Coalition for the Homeless, who shared their personal stories about struggling with homelessness, and ate at the world-famous Ben’s Chili Bowl. However, perhaps the main highlight was when they lobbied the staffs of Senators Blunt and McCaskill and Representatives Clay and Wagner. This year, the students chose to lobby for gun violence prevention, LGBT rights, equal pay for women, and Bridgeton Landfill clean-up. To say that the students did an INCREDIBLE job is an understatement. To hear their amazing lobby speeches, please join us for Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday, March 27 at 7:30 pm. They are not to be missed!

If you have any further questions, please contact Jennifer Bernstein at (314) 361-1564, ext. 117 or jenniferb@centralreform.org with any questions.